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On this night, every mom's a prom queen

Nashua party to deliver fun, breast-cancer support

By Hiroko Sato, hsato@lowellsun.com

Updated:
04/21/2011 08:49:16 AM EDT

NASHUA -- The puffy sleeves and pleated bottom of Betsy Crapps' silky pink Cinderella dress swing from side to side as she twists and turns on the runway. White ruffles and beaded shoulder pads collide as her friends dance away.

Grab your sunglasses because the spotlights reflecting on the women's old prom dresses can blind you. There's no shortage of satins and sequins.

It's a scene from a "Mom Prom," an ultimate girls' night out that Crapps and her friends in Canton, Mich., hold this time every year. The carefree dance party has brought in lots of money for charities annually, prompting thousands of other women to do the same across the country and landing the founder, Crapps, on TV shows like ABC's Good Morning America and The Gayle King Show on Oprah Winfrey's cable network.

Now the outlandish costume party is coming to Nashua, courtesy of Katie Long, Crapps' sister, who lives in Nashua, and her four friends. With plenty of tacky bridesmaid and prom dresses in their closets, the women can't wait to hit the dance floor.

But for Kelsey McCormick, a Groton resident who is organizing the event with Long, this party will be special. It's a night to think of her mother and all other breast-cancer survivors, McCormick said.

"She is the inspiration and motivation" for the event, organized as a fundraiser for Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, McCormick said.

On Friday, April 29, women from across the region will dance the night away at the Nashua Radisson Castle Hotel at the region's first Mom Prom, organized by Long, McCormick and their friends, Margot Bouvier of Groton, Kelly Spencer of Nashua and Kate Tuoghy of Boston.

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The party welcomes women of all ages and from all walks of life, whether or not they are mothers, Long said. The recent prom in Michigan included a woman in a wheelchair.

There is one rule, however: girls only.

There is no need to find a date. Dress however you want. Forget the household chores. Indulge in nostalgia and fantasy, posing for pictures with life-size cardboard cutouts of Fabio and Elvis.

"Women spend life taking care of other people," said Crapps, who is flying from Michigan to join her sister at the prom. "This is one night when we can have fun and no responsibilities."

Crapps, a 41-year-old mother of three, started the Mom Prom six years ago after attending an Oscar Awards viewing party at her friend's house in her 1987 prom dress, which her mom had just found in her childhood home outside Detroit. She enjoyed it so much that she organized her first prom-dress night as a fun, dinner party with friends. When a local newspaper reporter came to cover the event, she realized she could turn it into a fundraiser for the the local church where she works.

The first Mom Prom, with $10 admission, raised $850 for a local family shelter. It then began generating about $3,000 a year as word about the outrageous costume party spread. An Associated Press story on this year's event wound up on the Yahoo homepage earlier this year. Then "it went viral," said Crapps, who appeared on Good Morning America on March 10. Now, women in 20 states are planning Mom Proms.

Long, a former seventh-grade science teacher who has three children, thought it's time she brought the prom night to the area. She and her friends decided to raise money for breast-cancer research in honor of McCormick's mother, a two-time cancer survivor.

McCormick, a 32-year-old pharmaceutical consultant with two children, was only 7 when her mother was diagnosed with colon cancer. Last year, after decades with a clean bill of health, her mother again received devastating news: She had breast cancer. Her doctor concluded the intense radiation therapy and 14 years of hormone treatment caused the breast cancer, McCormick said.

But, her mother survived again.

"Having gone through it one another time, it gave them some strength," McCormick said of her parents in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Her mother is now 59 and cancer-free.

Long and Crapps agree that girls just love to dress up no matter how old they get. And McCormick and her friends -- who jokingly call themselves the "prom committee" -- are hoping to turn the Mom Prom into an annual event.

Crapps is unfazed by the fame the Mom Prom brought her. She is also not interested in making Mom Prom into a larger organization, and she doesn't take fees from prom organizers in other states.

"My goal really is to (let them) have their own proms and raise money for charities that are close to their hearts," Crapps said.

Admission to the April 29 Mom Prom, which features a DJ, open bar, food and cakes, is $50. For more information, visit www.mompromnashua.org.

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